Lupercalia
John D. Muccigrosso
15 February
Ovid’s Fasti for this day
This third morning after the Ides sees the naked Luperci,
And the rites of two-horned Faunus enacted.
…
Why, you ask, do the Luperci run, and since it’s their custom,
This running, why do they strip their bodies naked?
…
A grove below the Esquiline Hill, untouched
For many years, was sacred to great Juno.
When they had gathered there, husbands and wives
Bowed their knees, alike, in supplication,
And suddenly the tree tops moved and trembled,
And the goddess spoke strange words in her grove:
‘Let the sacred he-goat pierce the Italian wives’.
The crowd stood, terrified, at the troubling words.
There was an augur (his name is lost with the years,
But he had lately arrived, an exile from Tuscany),
He killed a he-goat and, at his command, the wives
Offered their backs, to be beaten by thongs from its hide.
Plutarch’s Life of Romulus 21
For the priests slaughter goats, and then, after two youths of noble birth have been brought to them, some of them touch their foreheads with a bloody knife, and others wipe the stain off at once with wool dipped in milk. [5] The youths must laugh after their foreheads are wiped. After this they cut the goats’ skins into strips and run about, with nothing on but a girdle, striking all who meet them with the thongs, and young married women do not try to avoid their blows, fancying that they promote conception and easy child-birth. A peculiarity of the festival is that the Luperci sacrifice a dog also.
Plutarch’s Life of Anthony 12
For at the festival of the Lycaea, which the Romans call Lupercalia, Caesar, arrayed in a triumphal robe and seated in the forum upon the rostra, was viewing the runners to and fro. Now, the runners to and fro are many noble youths and many of the magistrates, anointed with oil, and with leathern thongs they strike in sport those whom they meet.
Plutarch’s Life of Caear 61
At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped to an easy delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.
